Name: Poutine
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 2 servings
Cuisine: Canadian
Ingredients: 3 Potatoes; Oil for frying; 200 g Cheese curds; Salt; 3 tbsp Butter; 3 tbsp Flour; 1.5 cups Beef stock; 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce; Black pepper

Ingredients

2servings

Potatoes · large russets, or 500g frozen fries3
Oil for frying · plenty
Cheese curds · or torn mozzarella / string cheese200 g
Salt · to taste
Gravy
Butter3 tbsp
Flour3 tbsp
Beef stock · or chicken stock1.5 cups
Worcestershire sauce1 tsp
Black pepper · to taste

Steps

Cut the potatoes into thick fries, soak in cold water for 15 minutes, then dry thoroughly. Skip this if using frozen fries.
⏲ 15 min
Fry at 160C/320F once to cook through, then drain. Raise to 190C/375F and fry again until crisp, and salt them.
⏲ 10 min
Gravy: melt the butter in a pot and stir in the flour, cooking until it turns light brown.
⏲ 3 min
Whisk in the stock a little at a time until smooth, add Worcestershire and pepper, and simmer until thickened.
⏲ 5 min
Pile the hot fries in a dish and scatter the cheese curds evenly over them.
⏲ 1 min
Pour the piping-hot gravy over the top so the curds just start to melt, and serve immediately.

Variations

Italian poutine: Bolognese sauce instead of gravy.
Pulled-pork poutine: Topped with shredded BBQ pork.
Breakfast poutine: Add a runny egg and bacon.
Galbi poutine: A Korean spin with soy-braised short rib on top.

Tips

Double-fry the potatoes for crisp outsides and fluffy insides — frozen fries work great too.
No cheese curds? Tear up mozzarella or string cheese as a stand-in.
Pour the gravy while it's piping hot so the curds melt just right.
Bring the curds to room temperature first for better melting.
Serve at once — poutine turns soggy if it sits.

More detail and the reasons why (4)

The gravy has two jobs that want opposite amounts of contact. It has to reach the curds — piping hot, with the curds already at room temperature, because a cold curd in a cooling gravy never softens at all — and it must not stay on the chips long enough to undo them. Poured a little too cool it leaves squeaky curds in lukewarm gravy; left to sit it leaves chips that were fried twice for nothing.
Which makes the curds a barrier as well as the point. Nachos works on the same principle for a fried surface meeting something wet — melted fat is what a chip's surface can hide behind — and scatters its cheese so every chip gets some. The curds go on before the gravy for exactly that reason, except that they are melting while they do it, so this barrier is thinning from the moment it is laid. Whether a fried surface stays crisp is decided by what happens after it leaves the oil (deep frying), and poutine is the version with no dry interval at all.
A curd is chosen for not melting far. Sorted by how it melts, fresh, high-moisture cheese sits at the loose end (dairy and heat) — but this dish wants the curd to soften and keep its squeak rather than to flow, so the gravy's temperature is a setting and not a maximum. Mozzarella torn up is the stated substitute and it goes further than that, which is why it reads as cheesy chips rather than as poutine.
"Serve at once" is measured against a clock that does not reset. Fried potato left standing against something wet drinks up the moisture, and reheating does not bring the texture back. Nothing here can be re-crisped once the gravy is on it, which is the other half of why the potatoes are fried twice — the second fry is buying minutes, not colour.

The basics behind this dish

Cooking basics →

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